Fraud is one of the biggest challenges companies face when conducting market research. IP Quality Score reports that, on average, bogus feedback makes up roughly 20% of all responses.
Bad actors can infiltrate market research campaigns at virtually every step of the process. For example, they will hire dishonest actors and deploy automated bots that pose as legitimate participants to submit survey responses and trick the payment issuer into sending them rewards. Or they lie in wait and intercept payments before they reach legitimate recipients.
But organizations can fight back by becoming more proactive in thwarting fraud. Here are five key steps researchers and their payment issuance partners can take to thwart fraudsters:
- Step up the challenge: Insert complex questions into the reward redemption process that will reveal suspicious inconsistencies.
- Ensure your teams are checking IDs: Verify recipients’ identities: deploy multi factor authentication (MFA) technology to verify recipients’ identities without requiring them to provide their personal Identifiable Information (PII). Other means include email validation, device fingerprinting, and even matching phone numbers and zip codes.
- Make user security your top priority: Fully-encrypt data to protect respondents’ privacy.
- Track and report suspicious outcomes: Review reporting on recipients who fail the authentication process.
- Make security best practices part of the playbook: Use IP blocking and password rules to ensure rewards are delivered to the right person every time.
Together researchers and payment providers can create obstacles for fraudsters at numerous points in the market research life cycle. Brands trust the market research industry to effectively use their investment to deliver high-quality insights and finding innovative ways to thwart fraud now will prevent these problems from compounding as the industry continues to grow.
When creating processes to thwart fraud, we must keep in mind that consumers don’t want to spend too much time in the process and want to be rewarded for their time quickly. Investing in fraud prevention facilitates quicker redemption while making sure that the industry is not treating its most valuable survey correspondents with suspicion and that they stay encouraged to participate in future surveys.
Bot activity that is not found on the market research side can be caught in the payments process by employing a mix of 2-factor and multifactor authentication (MFA) methods.
Follow this link to learn how our secure platform ensures rewards are delivered to the right person every time.